A young girl, Benilde, so protected by her religious family that she seemingly knows nothing about procreation, insists that her mysterious pregnancy is a miracle; however, her distressed bourgeois family decides that Benilde has lost her mind.

In a small fishing village, two boys are forced to take part in drug trafficking. When the eldest plans to escape, the younger one is forced to deal with the adversities of being left behind.

The young girl, Antónia Margarida Castelo Branco, is handed over by her mother to Brás Telles de Meneses because of the obscure interests between rural aristocratic families in the North. Brás is a ruined man, a bohemian with a reputation for violence and erratic behaviour. Antonia’s fortune is the first sacrifice made by the young wife. Fascinated by the man who humiliates and ill-treats her, she follows him in a pilgrimage to increasingly barren lands, to increasingly less hospitable houses.

Episodes from throughout the entire military history of Portugal are told through flashbacks as a conscripted student of history recounts them to his fellow soldiers while they march through an African colony in revolt during 1973.